As far as we know this information was accurate when it was published (see years in brackets), but may have changed since then.Please check rates and details directly with the companies in question if you need more recent info.

History

1961

cave rediscovered by Agostino Miglio, the head of the museum of local history.

1961-1968

excavation by Paolo Graziosi from Florence University.

Description

The Riparo di Romito is a 34m long overhanging rock, followed by a 25m
long cave.
Not very impressive from the speleologic point of view, but a world famous
paleologic and archaeological site.

The cave was rediscovered for science by Agostino
Miglio, the head of the museum of local history.
He got a hint from two locals Gianni Grisolia and Rocco Oliva from the next village.
It seems the cave was known to the locals all the time, but they did not imagine
its importance.
After it was discovered an excavation campaign of seven years started, followed
by others, and the work still goes on.
The first excavation was made by Paolo Graziosi from
Florence University.

The cave contains numerous remains of plants, animals and human visitors.
This allowed the reconstruction of the climate and the culture of the people
living here over a very long period of time.
The single most important find are some engravings, especially two skeches of
bovidae (Bos primigenius).
The engravings were covered by cave sediments most of the time, which explains
their extremely good preservation.
Other finds include tools of daily use and items of burial rites.

The cave also contained some graves, which are distributed all over its floor.
Two graves contained the skeletons of couple, one was between 15 and 20 years
old, the other couple about 30 years old.
Other graves contained single young men.
All the buried people were only between 1.40 and 1.55m tall, some even smaller.
The skeletons, are on display as they were found, but only copies of the bones.
The originals finds are now in the regional museum at Reggio di Calabria and in
Florence.

The cave was was repeatedly used for certein time, and then abandoned.
One of those periods of intensive use was around 1000 AD, when the cave was used
by eremites.
A lengend tells, that they were monks from the nearby monastery Sant'Elia.
This is also the explanation for the name of the cave: the Italian word
eremita was was altered during centuries into romito.